Popular Superstitions and Old Habits

Giotto Di Bondone, Allegory of Obedience, ca. 1330

"...hitherto nothing has been practiced and cultivated among men better or longer than obedience..."

Friedrich Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil, 1886

Giotto Di Bondone was born in Del Colle, a village in the commune of Vespignano near Florence in 1266 (Woltmann and Woermann, ed. by Sydney Colvin, History of Ancient, Early Christian and Medieval Painting, 1880). Giotto was an architect and painter in cities across Italy. Only three years before his death in 1337, Giotto was appointed by the comune of Florence to the position of chief architect of the Florence Cathedral, a testament to the high esteem in which he was held by both his cohorts and the civic leaders of his time. Dante and Petrach both laud him for his mastery in the arts and one scholar has written that "the opinion of his contemporaries entertained of Giotto as the greatest genius in the arts which Italy in that age possessed..." and, "It was not only the artist Giotto, but the whole man, that impressed the minds of his contemporaries."

The beginning of Giotto's artistic vocation was devoted to the Franciscan order at Assisi. Later in his career Giotto would return to Assisi and it is there at the Lower Church, above the tomb of St. Francis, that he painted the Allegory of Obedience shown above. The central, winged-female figue is Obedience and she is flanked by a Janus-faced Wisdom and Humility holding a torch to the viewer's right. Obedience places a yoke upon a Franciscan monk while angels and other characters look on. Above the scene St. Francis himself is pulled up to heaven by two arms while two angels appear to recite the laws of the Order of St. Francis.

All well and good, except according to Alfred Woltmann, Giotto didn't really like the monkish way of life:

"he who had to put so much of his art at the service of the Franciscans had, in doing so, become disgusted with the monkish temper, he protests with rare independence against the mischievous wolves who, in their false clothing, seem the mildest of lambs, and against disguised lust of power and hypocrisy. Poverty unsought, he says, is bad enough, but voluntary poverty, at least, did not lead to wisdom, morality, virtue, or knowledge, and it was a shame to call that virtue which consisted in despising what was good."*

* For the full text on which Woltmann bases his claim see, The Collected Works of Dante Gabriel Rossetti, Vol. II, Boston, 1887, pp. 212-214, "Giotto Di Bondone, Canzone. Of the Doctine of Voluntary Poverty."

The Materialism of National Pride: the Case of the Coin and the Body

Geert Wilders, leader of the Netherlands' right-wing, Partij voor de Vrijheid (Party for Freedom)

This is sort of longish, but here it goes...

On the BBC World Service broadcast this morning a correspondent interviewed some folks from Holland on their views of the Euro-zone crisis and what they thought of the option, now promoted by Geert Wilders and the PVV, of returning to the Guilder. The Dutch interviewed liked the idea and supported the PVV for their anti-Euro stance. The PVV is already relatively popular, it's the third-largest party in Holland and wields some not so insignificant influence on the policies of the ruling coalition government because of a "support-pact" made after the last elections. However political insiders and cynics like Matt Steinglass of the Financial Times have stressed that Wilders' new platform on the Euro is nothing more than political opportunism for a party that until the crisis began, focused singularly on the immigration "crisis" and the menacing threat of creeping Sharia law and so-called Islamo-fascism in Europe (www.FT.com, 11/13/2011). Yet Gilders himself made a tantalizing and perhaps compelling connection between his party's two favorite bogey-men when interviewed by the BBC. I paraphrase: "We have hundreds of thousands of immigrants in our country who are given housing and money and we get nothing out of it and on top of that we have a foreign coin."

Christopher Howgego writes in Ancient History from Coins (London, 1995), "it is wrong to deny that there is a connection between coinage and autonomy." Coins make political statements about national identity and prestige. "they assert the identity of the polis, kingdom or state which produced them... It might be a matter of pride for the badge of the city to be current, and the act of coining itself might be an affirmation of the status or autonomy of a polis..." I write this during Chanukkah and I'm reminded of a passage from I Maccabees that expresses exactly this type of civic pride and assertion of national identity. Antiochus the VII grants Simon the Hasmonean the right to mint Judea's own coins: "και επετρεψα σοι ποιησαι κoμμα ιδιον νoμισμα (your own stamped coin) τη χωρα σου."

Halfway across the globe, the struggle over national pride and identity is playing out around and over a Pakistani woman's body. Never mind that Veena Malik appeared on India's equivalent of Big Brother, which she ably defended in a head-to-head verbal brawl with a cleric on Pakistan's Frontline, she then had the gall to pose "nude" for India's FHM magazine with the initials, 'ISI' prominently emblazoned on her arm.

Malik bears the inscription of the (in)famous Pakistani intelligence agency on the cover of an Indian magazine, the literal sign of Pakistan's secretive arm augmented by the fact that she, a Pakistani for crying out loud, has no clothes on! Oh, she says she was duped by the mag and never intended to pose nude... more to come.

Liriodendron tulipifera

Fall in New York: Cones of the American tulip tree

Divine Meadow

On the Bear Valley Trail to Arch Rock,

Point Reyes National Seashore, California